Month: March 2019

How do you extend your customer’s experience after they leave your retail store? Ensure that the bag emblazoned with your logo has a second life.

Stores in the Mall of America have done just that and capitalized on the fact that people do not want to carry items through the mall’s 96 acres. A hands-free shopper is a happy shopper, so several stores at the mall package their purchases in bags with shoulder straps. It allows for immediate ease of transport as well as an extended use for the bag after the shopping trip is over. Brilliant!

Are you providing your customers with something disposable that could become marketing material for you with a small additional investment? Replace those conference notepads with your organization’s branded pieces instead of the venue’s. Encourage people to take your restaurant-branded pen when they sign the tab. Provide to-go items that people will actually want to keep and reuse instead of toss into the landfill.

Take a critical look at all that your organization distributes. How can you infuse additional quality so more of your users actually keep what you give them?

In a nod to truly understanding their audience, Starbucks has opened up a new store in Washington, DC that caters to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. It’s located near Gallaudet University, an institution for deaf students, and features 24 employees who are proficient in American Sign Language.

Starbucks seeks not only to serve the deaf community but to provide employment opportunities for them. Through the use of ASL as well as technology, deaf employees are able to interact with customers and hold supervisory roles – something that Starbucks hopes will set an example for other businesses.

It’s a niche that may not work everywhere but given its location, it makes perfect sense. Is there a segment of your audience that you could serve more effectively? Maybe you could print some materials in another language to serve your ethnic neighbors. Offer more accommodating hours to meet the needs of those working third shift. Provide larger waiting rooms with child-friendly areas for those who must obtain your services with children in tow.

One size does not have to fit all. Thrive by being cognizant of what your individual customers need and then specialize your offerings to fulfill it.

One of the signs of maturity is the ability to compartmentalize your emotions.

If you come out of a bad meeting, you can put it away and walk into the next meeting neutralized. If it’s a bad day at work, you leave it in the car before you head into the house. If you have a great moment, you don’t let it prevent you from tackling the tough conversation with appropriate seriousness.

Cesare Pavese said: “We do not remember days, we remember moments.” Pay attention to the emotions of your moments and ensure that they align with the present and don’t allow the negativity to carry over from the past.

When you are in any type of relationship that isn’t going well, Adam Grant writes that you have four choices on how to respond. Your choice varies based on the control you possess and the commitment you have to preserve the relationship itself, whether that be a personal or professional one.

Your choices are:

Exit: You leave the relationship

Voice: You speak up and actively try to improve the situation

Persistence: Gritting your teeth and bearing the situation as it is without trying to change it

Neglect: You stay in the relationship but do just enough to get by

If you find interest in a relationship waning, evaluate the amount of control you have and the degree you wish to invest in improving the situation. Depending upon the situation, any of the four strategies may be valid choices but the key is to choose your path with intentionality.

When I have an idea for a dot topic, it becomes a task to be done but requires little thinking time. I can usually sit down and write a dot in a matter of a few minutes. But if I’m not clear on a subject and corresponding lesson, I can think about it for hours without ever putting a word on the page. The identification of the content moves writing a blog from a thinking exercise to a task to be accomplished and allows all my energy to be dedicated toward getting it done.

I think everyone is far more productive when working on tasks instead of nebulous thought projects. Instead of ruminating about what I could incorporate into a syllabus, I turn thinking-into-task by putting my short list of options on paper to make it easier to choose what I use. I keep running lists of many things: dot ideas, things to do, gift suggestions, books to read – so that I can select one when warranted (task) instead of generating ideas from scratch (thinking). I try to start on a big project – the hardest part for me – so that what remains is more of a task to finish instead of a more daunting requirement to think about all of its component parts.

Consider strategies that you can incorporate to turn your thinking into tasks. Set up a weekly menu, so the object becomes making dinner instead of spending time wondering what to have for your next meal. Keep a cheat sheet of the clothes you pack for a trip so you know which outfit to wear for the day (task) instead of staring into your suitcase trying to remember what you brought (thinking). Develop a checklist for onboarding of new employees so you can focus your attention on making the experience special instead of spending brain power trying to remember all of the steps.

Yes, there is great value in thinking and allocating time to allow your mind to roam free – and it requires more time and mental capacity than most of us have for routine projects and daily responsibilities. Create systems to minimize the time spent thinking about inconsequential matters so that your brain and calendar are free to ruminate about the really important choices.

In workshops or classes, it is often desirable to mix people up into small groups apart from those in their immediate proximity. Too many times the presenter says: “find someone” or does the dreadful counting off by 1, 2, 3, etc. With just a bit of forethought, you can infuse much more creativity.

One of my favorite ways to mix groups is by handing participants a playing card as they enter. This opens up a host of mixing options: by color, by suit, matching number, odds/evens, opposite color, face card and number, etc. You can hand out cards in the beginning and use a variety of sorting strategies throughout the session.

It’s also easy to get people to pair by similarities: the (approximate) number of letters in their name, birthday season, number of “feet” in their family (allowing them to decide whether to count just humans or to include animal feet), number of siblings, astrological sign, etc.

You can also have people line up in order and then pair with the person who ends up next to them. Order could include: number of years with the organization, by height, by the last 4 digits of their phone number or by house number. Having people line up alphabetically also works: alpha by first or middle name, by their boss’ name, by hometown, favorite cartoon character or last television show they watched.

If you know the approximate number of participants in advance you can write names on strips of paper to distribute as people arrive – later having them find the other members of their set to form a group. Examples include: Fred, Barney, Wilma and Betty (the Flintstones); George, Elaine, Kramer and Jerry (Seinfeld); or Amy, Beto, Kamala and Bernie (presidential hopefuls). The same principle applies for categories instead of names: Pacers, Bulls, Lakers, Spurs (NBA teams) or Aquaman, Black Panther, Wonder Woman and Thor (superhero movies).

And, as a last resort, if you find yourself in a pinch to do a quick count-off, please at least do it in another language (uno, dos, tres…) or with some aspect of creativity (Lions, Tigers, Bears, Oh My…). You’ll achieve the same end result, but your participants will pair off with a smile.

At a recent lecture, the speakers asked us to look around the room and find something that was red. Then we were asked to close our eyes and think of something in the room that was green. Most couldn’t do it. It was a quick, yet powerful exercise to illustrate that we see what we focus on — and often unintentionally ignore what is outside of that narrow view.

Of course, it’s one of the reasons that writing down goals is productive – it elevates our ambitions to top-of-mind and puts them in the front of our consciousness. Focusing on a topic also works for creativity if we allow the time for ideas to “incubate” in our mind. For example, I facilitated a strategic plan for a group that works with generational poverty and as soon as the date was set, I began seeing articles and news items related to that topic. I know that they were always there, but once I began to focus on the subject it was seemingly everywhere.

Our minds are too inundated with information to simultaneously focus in many directions with equal depth. Be conscious about whether you will look for “red” or “green” today and hone in on just one. It is better to bring vibrancy to one color than to mute them all in the background.